Harold Davis's Blog, page 210

Encapsulation

When you have four kids like I do, shopping for food occurs frequently. The one thing you want to do when you take the kids into the supermarket is to encapsulate them to prevent general madness, mayhem, and terrorizing of the civilian population.

Kids in a Shopping Cart © Harold Davis

What better way to encapsulate them than in a honey trap, like this shopping cart? Katie Rose and Mathew are shown in the “cab” and Nicky is riding on top.

It’s times like these that I am grateful for my iPhone camera because it is the camera I always have with me!

Scale

One of the most powerful tools we have as photographers is the ability to manipulate the viewer’s sense of scale. Why does this matter?

When the viewer first looks at an image they look to think they have have correctly assessed the contents. If, in fact, they realize they have not, or they sense ambiguity in the subject—as in, “What exactly am I looking at?”—the result is a double-take.

Low Tide at Drakes Beach by Harold Davis—Click to view larger

This double-take leads directly to a clean slate. By misdirecting the viewer, we have given them the chance to view some portion of the world with new eyes. This means showing people something in a way they haven’t seen before—which is the goal of much photography.

Case in point: I shot the image above on a rock at low tide in the intertidal zone at Drakes Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore, CA. For all the world it looks like a vast landscape from above, but as soon as the caption is noted the viewer will automatically adjust scale and visual expectations.

Emergence

The idea behind Within the Canvas (below) is to show the model emerging from a background. It is not clear where the model begins and where the model ends. Model and canvas seem to flow together. The fabric the model is wearing is part of the canvas. Or, is it?

Even as an issue of three-dimensional spacial relationships consider: Is the model is in front or in back of the canvas? Depending where you look in the image, both are possible—leading to potential paradox and visual impossibility. A potential solution is to assume there is a slit in the canvas, but this doesn’t really work (observe her hand).

Within the Canvas © Harold Davis—Click to view larger

To make this image I shot the model on a white background. She was wrapped in sheer, white gauze. In post-production, I placed the model image as a layer on a canvas background, then added a series of textures on top of the Photoshop composite.

Related stories that show images with models and textures: Everything in Moderation; Like a Titian.

Also see: Impossible gallery; The eye believes what it thinks it sees; Models category; Models gallery (some models are NSFW).

Wet Adherence

For the past several days we’ve had very wet and windy weather—the epitome of winter’s rainy season in the San Francisco Bay area. During an interlude in this weather I saw the Japanese maple leaf shown in the image plastered to the outside of an upstairs window.

Wet Adherence © Harold Davis—Click to view image larger

To shoot the wet maple leaf, I positioned the camera on a tripod inside looking out—so the image is looking through a wet window to the leaf on the exterior. I used a macro lens, and shot two exposure sequences, one at moderate depth-of-field (f/10) for the window glass, and one stopped down (to f/22) to get the leaf itself maximally in focus.

The image you see combined four of the low-depth-of-field exposures (using Nik HDR Efex Pro) for the window pane. I then painted-in two exposures of the f/25 leaf exposures using layering and the Brush Tool in Photoshop.

Exposure data: 40mm macro, six exposures, all exposures at ISO 200,  4 exposures shot using shutter speeds between 1/15 of a second and 2.5 seconds at f/10, 2 exposures shot at shutter speeds of 2 seconds and 5 seconds with an aperture of f/25, tripod mounted, exposures combined using Nik HDR Efex Pro and Photoshop.

Everything in moderation—even moderation

I shot Kirsten using a large, strobe-powered softbox as the single source of illumination. The softbox was on a low setting and positioned above and to the right of the model. You can see the reflection of the light in Kirsten’s beautiful eyes. The low-level of very diffuse lighting, and the position of the single light, account for both the overall attractiveness of the light and the radical light fall-off on the left side of the image.

Kirsten © Harold Davis

To process the image in Photoshop, I used a number of textured overlays on top of the background image of Kirsten. For example, one of these overlays was of linen canvas with a very definite texture. Another was the scanned papyrus that I’ve used in my Floral Tapestries (the background shown in Thistle While You Work is an example that uses this scan of a piece of papyrus).

The trick with this kind of post-processing is not to overdo it. As Oscar Wilde put it, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” I wanted Kirsten to look as gorgeous as she is naturally, and slightly abstract—but I didn’t want the post-production work to make her look artificial.

See Like a Titian for a related post-production treatment of a model.

Gratitude

Life conspires to make gratitude difficult. Things go wrong. Deadlines press. People are irritating. Clients demand the impossible and won’t listen to reason. Drivers on the cellphone paying no attention to traffic cut in ahead of one.

In other words, it is easy to get pecked to death by ducks. And behind this day-to-day noise on the line, the possibility of tragedy always lurks.

No one with kids feels immune from incipient tragedy. If you’ve ever had the emergency operator break in on the phone line telling you to meet your child’s ambulance at the hospital, or if you’ve ever been told the chance of your child’s survival is in the “low single digits”—and I have had both these experiences—you’ll never again take normal life for granted.

Golden Gate Sunset © Harold Davis—Click to view larger

But a brush with mortality makes life sweeter. And clearing the field of all the “pecking ducks” by watching a sunset, or taking a walk in nature reminds me of how much there is to be thankful for.

I am happy when I remember to be thankful for things large and small: the rush of my kids filling the house with life, a spider web wet with morning dew, and colors in the late afternoon sky. I am grateful that I can be thankful for the gifts I’ve received rather than embittered by the struggle that life is on occasion for all of us.

Nicky in a fedora

We recently celebrated Nicky’s eleventh birthday. The fedora hat shown in this photo was one of the birthday presents he had requested. I don’t know where he gets his sense of sartorial style—it is probably not from either of his parents.

Nicky in a fedora © Harold Davis

For more images of Nicky, see Nicky and Friend and Nicky is Nine (I seem to have missed number ten!).

Light at the end of the tunnel

Often in life it’s really hard to do things that matter. In The War of Art Steven Pressfield calls the force that makes accomplishment so hard resistance: “Are you are writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what resistance is.”

Resistance takes many guises, and you can read Steven Pressfield’s excellent short book to see many of them defined, and to formulate a game plan for overcoming resistance.

Do you know what? Almost everything about my life and work as an artist and photographer is hard. I know resistance. I fight it every day.

Negative Space © Harold Davis—Click to view larger

With this image taken in a slot canyon near Page, Arizona, the act of photography was physically difficult. I had to get to the location, wait for the right weather and maneuver my camera and tripod into position to keep the rig steady for a number of exposures. When I finally had time to get to it, processing took many hours of precision work on my computer.

There’s no guarantee that anyone will like—let alone buy—anything I do. My work supports a family of six, so this is a scary thought.

Doing my art may be hard, but it is a great gift to me, difficulties and all.

I like to say that if it were easy, everyone would do it.

True enough. And, in some perverse way, the difficulties of making my art help me keep at it, day after day. I enjoy a challenge. Most of the time I have faith that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Reflections

What is it about reflections that draw us in? The initial fascination lies with the mirror world aspect of something reflected. Of course, the reflection is mostly like our world—but it differs. The most obvious difference is that something seen reflected—for example, in a mirror—is reversed.

The less mirror-like the reflecting surface the more distorted the reflection. For example, when water reflects the reflections merge into refraction. Things beneath the surface come into view and join with our reflected world to create an alternative universe. What started with an interest in reversal becomes quickly charged with exotic differences and the admixture of more than one reality.

Train Bridge near Richmond © Harold Davis—Click to view larger

For a moment, consider some other meanings of “to reflect.” To reflect is to think carefully about something. In psychology, we reflect feelings back to the person originating them. In photography, most subjects reflect light—and the reflected light is the subject of the photo.

No wonder that some images with reflections hold our interest. For many photographers a viable strategy is to get the viewer interested with line, color and composition but bring the viewer deeper using reflection. A reflection is our key to enhancing our understanding by looking at our world a little differently, and to thereby know ourselves better as well.

Down with irony

In a recent excellent and thought provoking online New York Times opinion piece Christine Wampler suggests that “irony is the ethos of our age.” Wampler identifies advertising, politics, fashion and television as categories “of contemporary reality [that] exhibit this will to irony.”

Red Tulips © Harold Davis

“To live ironically is to hide in public,” Wampler notes. She continues: “How did this happen? It stems in part from the belief…that everything has already been done.” To be ironical stems to some extent from an aversion  to risk. If you make it clear preemptively that you are not taking something seriously, then you cannot be burnt too badly if it doesn’t fly. But as Wampler opines, “Will we be satisfied to leave an archive filled with video clips of people doing stupid things? Is an ironic legacy even a legacy at all?”

One cultural area that Wampler does not mention is the art world, a world that I interact with—particularly in relationship to photography. And, yes, for many “high art” photography galleries if it isn’t ironical in a self-referential way (think Cindy Sherman), it isn’t art.

A little bit of satire or irony can be a good thing, but a lot of irony turns genuine feeling to dust. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. Digital technologies have opened an era in which ironic sensibilities can quickly proliferate (as Wampler notes), but these technologies have also given birth to new ways of approaching and creating art. Art that can be approached with the joy of creation, passion and pleasure in the thing itself. Like flowers, waves and surf with its endless ballet on the rocky shore. Down with irony!